In light of recent events, I was going back and reading some old comics, including one of my old favourites, Garth Ennis' Condors, a dismally cynical (but also funny) story about several opposing soldiers in the Spanish Civil War sharing a shell hole. It also has a bit of a "Junior's first primer on the Spanish Civil War" aspect to it.

I liked it enough that a long time ago when a friend asked me about it, I actually scanned all the pages for him to read it. Not sure if I ever posted it on the old forums or not, but here it is (again).

I'm finally caught up and catching Transformers: Lost Light (formerly More than Meets the Eye) monthly. It may be my favorite comic now.

I'm not caught up with the other ongoing, Till All Are One, and jumping on is a little tricky given the trade schedule. Vol 1's out and collects #1-#4; the latest single issue is #6. So maybe I'll be able to catch up when Vol 2's out? Or maybe by then the monthlies will be two months ahead again. (At least back issues are half-price on Comixology...)

There is a third ongoing series, Optimus Prime. Regrettably, I cannot say that I give a fuck about it.

Transformers: Robots in Disguise was a solid damn book, House of Cards on Cybertron...but then it got retooled after its first major "season" arc (which ended with Starscream being elected King of Cybertron) and turned into more of the boring Earth shit that made me quit reading the comics years ago. (Although it did give us the "None of this is my problem. Have fun, idiots." panel, and a subplot about Thundercracker writing terrible screenplays and not realizing they're terrible. And an issue narrated by a drone and a dog. ... ...You know what, okay, it was still pretty awesome sometimes. Just mostly not.)

Fortunately, the Windblade miniseries picked up the Cybertron storyline (now with the cast of Beast Wars, and if the sentence "Rattrap is Starscream's Starscream" does not make you giddy then you and I are very different people), and that's what's currently continuing as Till All Are One. So I'd like to keep up with that! I had my CBG order vol 1; maybe I'll switch over to monthlies after vol 2?

I have a whole lot more to say about this stuff, as should probably be clear by how much I've talked about it already. I'm thinking a series of blog posts is probably in order, but that sounds a lot like work.

(And how do you even structure such a thing? Do I start with Phase 1? On the one hand, Phase 1 is a mediocre letdown; on the other, it's got Megatron Origin, which is not only a good comic, it's probably the most important comic in defining what the IDW-verse became, since it explains Megatron's and the Decepticons' motivations and why the war happened in the first place.

And then you get into Phase 2 and MtMtE and RiD, and if that's where you're jumping on there's a lot of infuriating continuity that's not going to immediately make sense -- and I say that as a guy who read about half the stuff before that -- and initially RiD is probably the better book, but as noted above it sorta founders after Starscream's Coronation, and then there's a Crossover Event I didn't read because (1) it wasn't in the Humble Bundle and (2) fuck Crossover Events, and I've forgotten most of the stuff I wanted to cap because it cracked me up (though I definitely remember the one where Rodimus gives Megatron a gold star for mending his evil ways), and...)

The biggest problem with AD is that it proves (much as the backmatter of Wytches did) that Scott Snyder's real strength is as a slice-of-life prose writer. I mean, I like his Batman just fine (I'm not as excited about it as a lot of people are, but it's good), but stuff like this makes me feel like he's wasted there, and his real calling is writing prose in the vein of Stand By Me.

(I know the novella's not called Stand By Me, but I've never read the novella. The movie's a perfectly fine comparison for the genre I'm talking about, though.)

And then it gets all meta. Two characters actually have a conversation about all the mean things people say about Fritz on the Internet, and how it's hard to tell if they're racist or what, and that Fritz was going to leave after her divorce but now that her daughters are here she'll be sticking around. And then later Petra shows up and says that people don't like her either but she'll be there for her nieces.

Speaking for myself, I used to like Fritz and Pet but they've become totally self-destructive, unsympathetic characters over the years. (So has Luba.) I still like their families; I'd like to see more of Venus and Killer. Haven't made up my mind on Baby and Rosario yet.

Gotham Academy is ending (booooo) but the creators seem upbeat about the possibility of the characters returning at some point. (Specifically, they suggest a guest appearance in Scooby-Doo Team-Up, and eventually telling the story alluded to in the Annual where Maps travels to the future and teams up with Terry McGinnis (whose father, Warren, is her classmate at Gotham Academy in the present day).)

IDW's already put out some fantastic hardcover collections of Ditko's work, but up to this point it's been company-owned and public-domain stuff without any involvement from Ditko himself. This volume is different, and will have "Ditko’s full support, participation, and approval," according to Chris Ryall.

That's...kind of a big deal. Ditko hasn't worked with a major comics publisher in years; he's continued to put out regular work, but only through Robin Snyder. I expect the quality of the Ditko books IDW's already done got his attention, but it still probably took a lot to convince him to do business with them.